I would just like to highlight one of your criteria: Is your prospective advisor... genuinely excited about you?
This is more important for future academic prospects than I would have anticipated going into my PhD program. I fit your list of attributes for all other criteria save this one. And without my supervisors enthusiasm for my work or my future prospects I've started losing confidence in myself and in my abilities. More than confidence, I'm missing out on networking opportunities due to his lack of interest.
This bar graph is difficult to interpret- there is way too much information on the graph leaving the viewer lost as to how flavor co-varies with value. It looks like a big jumble. Also, how do you "average impressions" when those impressions are binary?
I really enjoyed these exercises. One bug I found: for the "Find the Largest" dare the solution only allows 10 lines of code- but the test code takes up 9 lines! Since I was unable to solve the problem by creating and implementing a function (not enough line allowance) I found that was able to complete the dare by simply printing out the test answers. Only bug I found, though!
Nice idea. As a current PhD student I'm having fun filling in the gaps for those who have come before me.
Can you present some links for people in the database who have large academic trees? Everyone I'm searching for ends up being isolated so I don't know what a tree looks like on your website!
Nice interface! What web browsers are supported by briarpatch?
One thing I would suggest is giving the user a way to somehow collect and store the links of other users.. beyond the like button so that one can re-find those links.
As it turns out I've been looking for a streamlined way for sharing a mini-library of online resources with other people of similar interests (re: learning to code, recipes etc). This looks like a good way of doing just that!